Word: religion
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...Well into the Middle Ages, Christianity seems to have been a very festive kind of religion. The people danced in the churches. We know of the constant efforts of the church fathers to crack down on it. Religion has often been associated with some kind of collective celebration, where people get very excited or perhaps even enter into trances and feel as though they have made contact with the deities that way. But the distinction between what's religious and what's recreational is a pretty fine line to draw. If you look at a contemporary storefront Pentacostalist Sunday morning...
...great, first surprise of the 21st century was the re-emergence of religion. Not only did it arrive as the most powerful cultural force of the new millennium, it also came in a particular guise. It was a fundamentalist version of faith that was triumphant. Against the doubts and decadence of the West and amid the bewilderment and backwardness of the Middle East, an utterly uncompromising faith seemed the only answer to many prayers...
...right saw its most enthusiastic repre sentative in the Senate, Rick Santorum, go down to defeat by a crushing 18 points. For the first time, a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage failed - in Arizona. State initiatives for embryonic-stem-cell research became a wedge issue for ... Democrats. Religion finally cut both ways in democratic discourse. For the first time since the evangelical revival began in the 1980s, too much rigidity began to cost politicians votes rather than win them more...
...recognized. Ask yourself: How many Harvard students can explain the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni? How many understand why most Americans reject Darwinian evolution? Probably—and sadly—not many. But this sort of knowledge is essential to understand today’s world. Religion is not, as Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker wrote, an “American anachronism.” If anything, it is Harvard that needs explaining in our persistently religious global society...
...That is why the report’s maligned religion requirement was actually the most important. More than simply helping us understand our persistently religious world, it could have become an urgently needed space for rigorous thought about what the late Harvard philosopher and University Professor Paul Tillich called life’s ultimate questions—in short, about veritas...